College is expensive and there's no getting around that unless you have a time machine and can lock in older, cheaper tuition rates. Alternatively, finance blog Dumb Little Man suggests using a 529 plan to prepay at today's rates for college in the future.

While this advice will be far more helpful to parents whose kids are decently far from college than students looking at college now, there's one major caveat: you have to be very sure where your child will be attending college. However, more than 270 schools in the eleven states offer the ability to prepay. Check out Dumb Little Man's post below for other ways you can use a 529 plan to save for college.